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AI: And, excuse me. Where was that? Where were you?

PI: Well, I started out, after the Hamilton County jail, they sent me, drove me in a car with two other prisoners up to Milan, Michigan, federal correctional institution about 30 miles from Detroit, very small town. And this was a youth correctional facility, basically. In fact, I was then twenty-six years old. I was one of the oldest inmates in that prison. Most of them were in their late teens and early 20s. They were there on what were called youth correction sentences, what prisoners called a "zip six." You had a sentence that could be anywhere from zero to six years. And getting out early depended on your behavior.

So most of the inmates there, they were in there for things like interstate auto theft, taking a stolen car across the state line, which is a federal crime. Number of moonshiners from Kentucky and Tennessee, very interesting people. And a large group, about fifty Jehovah's Witnesses. I'd never met any Jehovah's Witnesses before then. They were all there for violating the draft, because Jehovah's Witnesses claim exemptions as ministers, and they all claim to be ministers. Well, they have no formal ministry in the Jehovah's Witness, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. I learned a great deal about Jehovah's Witnesses. Got to know them pretty well. They tried their very best to convert me the whole time I was in Milan. Very nice guys, most of them married with families, even though they were very young and totally dedicated. I mean, to give up a family, particularly when you have young children, and go to prison voluntarily is tough. I didn't have children. So, at any rate I got to know them very well, admired them, had long debates with them about theological doctrine and evolution, which they opposed vehemently.

And truthfully, the seven months I spent in Milan were not bad at all. I had a very easy job. I worked for the Protestant chaplain, who was a black Baptist minister, very, very nice person. He would even take me out of prison on Sundays to visit in Ann Arbor, which was nearby, go to church there. So it wasn't a bad experience at all. And I would have been very happy to spend my entire sentence in Milan. But I got into trouble. And the reason I got into trouble was that when the Vietnam War was getting more and more bad for the United States, the Jehovah's Witnesses in Milan, most of them, were allowed to get out of prison during the day, what was called work release. Most of them were skilled construction workers: electricians, carpenters, plumbers. And they were allowed to go out of prison and work regular jobs for regular pay. Some of them made more than the guards in the prison. And they'd come back at night. And this was a way to support their families. And the prisons had work release programs for nonviolent inmates. And suddenly an order came down from Washington, "Stop all outside programs." They couldn't go out to work and they couldn't go out to church. And I decided, took it upon myself to protest what was happening to them. And I contacted people I'd known and worked with in Washington, members of Congress. I can't remember exactly who, but they were on committees that dealt with the federal Bureau of Prisons. And the letters I sent out to them were read and intercepted.

And I was suddenly awakened one night and told that I was being transferred. And it was quite obviously retaliation for what I was doing. In fact, they didn't even tell Reverend Bivens who I was working for, that I was leaving. Took me out in the middle of the night and drove me down to Terre Haute, Indiana, federal penitentiary. And I didn't stay there long because I was, and they wouldn't even tell me where I was going. It wound up that I was being transferred to Danbury, Connecticut, but -- where there's another federal prison. But I spent what was probably only five or six days but seemed like forever, in Terre Haute. This was a real penitentiary -- bank robbers, murderers, people like that. And it was also, it's in southern Indiana. It's an old, old prison, huge stone walls, a place that was run both by, the inmates and the guards, by the Klan, the Ku Klux Klan. Southern Indiana had been a Klan stronghold. This was a rigidly segregated prison. This was in the late 1960s. This was not supposed to happen, but it was rigidly segregated. And I got into trouble in Lewisburg, I mean, in Terre Haute. In fact, I was threatened -- I can't remember whether he threatened to kill me or just to lock me up -- but threatened by one of the guards, the lieutenants, because I had written a letter outside saying, "Help. What are they doing? Where am I going? Nobody will tell me anything." And he said, "You're at our mercy. You're going to stay here until you rot." And we don't, and I had integrated the dining room, the big, huge cafeteria where the inmates had their meals -- all blacks on one side, all whites on the other side. And I had sat on the wrong side. And I was told that I shouldn't do this. And so that was one experience that I came close to deciding not to cooperate anymore, and just resisting. But then I was suddenly moved from Terre Haute to Danbury, Connecticut, back to a fairly easy place to do time. And I spent eighteen months or so in Danbury and went back to cooperating, working in an office, typing parole reports, doing lots of reading, and learning a lot about American history that I had never known before.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.